Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Jamie Litchfield.

[0:08] Jamie, how are you?

Jamie Litchfield: [0:09] I’m good. How are you?

Henrik: [0:11] Great. Jamie, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Jamie: [0:14] I work at a full‑service ad agency. I’ve been here for almost seven years. It’ll be seven years this summer. I was originally hired to manage one of our clients third party digital asset management system, which I do still currently do for them.

[0:31] I’m an admin, so I manage all of their users. I manage the assets. Mostly the assets that my agency creates, but then I also do work with some of our partner agencies and their assets as well.

[0:43] Through the time that I have been doing that, I started getting involved with our agencies internal system. I’m currently working to make some improvements with that system, and kind of rebranding for a new launch stock this summer to all of our internal employees.

Henrik: [0:58] Jamie, how does a full‑service marketing and communications agency use digital assets management?

Jamie: [1:03] At my agency, Digital Asset Management has been fully growing over the time I’ve been here. I came on board again seven years ago when there was a legacy system in place. It’s been in place for a very long time, before I started.

[1:18] That system was never really fully utilized to its fullest potential. It’s functioning kind of as a server that people can mount locally to their machine and browse through on that side. There are practically no users who log into and use the web interface that links over the repository.

[1:37] We definitely use the solution that we purchased a while back kind of as that functional server side, but not to the fullest extent of an asset management system that it really could be. That’s what I’m working on now with my team is overhauling the system, making improvements, doing some upgrades and things like that to make it a functional and usable system.

[1:58] We’re hoping to launch it this summer in phases to various departments at our agency. It’s still the same legacy system, so basically our end goal is to increase user adoption. Awareness is going to be a huge part of that. A lot of people don’t even realize we have a system like this.

“…our end goal is to increase user adoption. Awareness is going to be a huge part of that. A lot of people don’t even realize we have a system like this.”

[2:15] We’re doing all these things. We did the improvements on increased functionality and the user interface and things like that, so that when we do launch it this summer, hopefully we’ll have some great adoption, because it will really easy to use.

Henrik: [2:26] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with digital asset management?

Jamie: [2:30] At our agency, probably the biggest one is just simple lack of knowledge about the system that I just mentioned, because it’s been utilized just people think of it as a server, which has the very basic. You log in and mount the server on your desktop and you click through folders and your finder window. There is no smartness to the system. You just have to manually click through things.

[2:51] Sometimes they don’t even know that we have a librarian, like myself at the agency who is tagging files and making things easier for people to find our assets and things like that. That’s one of the biggest challenges, is just teaching people that across the agency.

[3:05] Once people know about it, they get really excited and they really see the value. When we roll out this summer, we’re hoping to partner with our human resources department and launch some training sessions.

[3:16] Get in when we have new hire sessions so we can get even 10 minutes intro with those new groups coming in to tell them about the system and get them log in from the beginning and things like that.

[3:29] Another challenge that I mentioned earlier was that this is a legacy system. We did look into a few years ago purchasing the new system, we did the whole use cases and things like that, but just couldn’t really get the dollars to spend the money from our financial team.

[3:46] We do have this system, and it was set up so long ago and no one has ever updated it since then, so we have out of date processes in place and out of date user profiles and things like that. We’re working hard to overhaul that and really bring it up to 2015. How we work now, it’s very different than how we worked when we first purchased the system and set it up.

[4:08] As far as successes go, right now we are in a very exciting time at the agency. We are working with our IT department, and we’ve got some buy in from higher up people to make some upgrades and enhancements for our user interface and increase some functionalities.

[4:26] We are excited to re‑brand and re‑launch our asset management system as a tool to our agency. People are pretty excited, there are some buzz going on, because they are starting to see the value of a digital asset management tool.

[4:39] Obviously, which a lot of listeners are going to be familiar with, but especially I think at ad agencies the time to market is so quick and creative and project managers in various departments are stretched so thin and doing so much. I consider anything we can do as our jobs as librarians to help them find the best assets in the quickest amount of time.

[5:01] They can really save hours, if not days off of a complete schedule, especially if we can find something that might have already been retouched and approved asset, we can save all of that retouching time and approval routing time and get that right out of their schedule and save them days. It’s definitely going to be a powerful tool.

[5:20] People from the feedback I’ve heard are very excited to have it launched. We’re also just starting to work and ingest new kinds of assets into our system. Up until now, we had been working just with static print assets, but we are going to be working to ingest our broadcast team video files, and potentially our digital teams’ digital banner files, and website files and things like that.

[5:47] It’s pretty exciting to be broadening up our horizon into those different mediums as well.

Henrik: [5:54] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Jamie: [5:59] This is a good question. When I first started at the agency, I didn’t even know what digital asset management was. I was just out of college and I was excited to have a job at a great agency. Over the years as I’ve learned, I think it’s important to be your own advocate, to be an asset management advocate.

[6:16] If you’re lucky enough to be in an environment where there is already an established asset management system in process, that’s great, but if you’re one of the many people I have a feeling who have a pretty small group and it’s not well known, I think you definitely can’t be afraid to do research and come up with ideas to push your asset management system forward.

[6:38] Especially if asset management isn’t established at your company, no one else is going to do it for you. You have to definitely be your own advocate.

[6:47] The other thing I would say, I think it’s great to participate in any opportunities you can. I do webinars and Webex all the time with vendors that aren’t our own vendors, but just to familiarize myself with what else is out there, other services. You make contacts that way.

[7:04] I think conferences are also great. I’ve been lucky enough to go to the Henry Stewart Conference in New York City two or three times now. I think that’s a wonderful conference. There are so many vendors there. It’s a great place to walk around and you can get a demo of pretty much every big system in the space, all in one day, which is a great opportunity.

[7:24] I think it’s just great information, the sessions are great and it’s very eye‑opening and informative. It’s a great couple days. I always find it very inspiring and exciting.

Henrik: [7:34] Thanks Jamie.

Jamie: [7:35] Thank you.

Henrik: [7:36] For more on this and other digital asset management topics, log onto anotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM podcast is available at anotherDAMpodcast.com to find 150 other podcast episodes, including transcripts of every interview.

Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Kevin Gepford. Kevin, how are you?

Kevin Gepford: [0:10] I’m fine. How are you?

Henrik: [0:12] Great. Kevin, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Kevin: [0:16] I work for Comedy Central at their in‑house Brand Creative department. We create all the advertising, the billboards, the video promos, graphics for digital platforms such as iTunes, Xbox, and Hulu.

[0:30] Specifically, I work on the print side of things. I’ve got hands‑on involvement with our photo re‑touching. We also do the mechanical production and the final delivery of the files to their destination. I work in a team of brilliant right‑brain creatives, but I’m more of a left‑brain sort of person.

[0:48] I got interested in DAM originally as a self‑defense against the distractions of non‑core tasks. I’m talking about requests like digging up logos for someone, cracking open old archives just to print out an ad from last year, or hunting for a specific image among all the assets that we had that were scattered across the universe of portable hard drives, servers, optical media, and the like.

[1:15] The DAM that emerged from this is something that’s been a resource for the whole company for about 10 years, and it’s grown and evolved. Later, as time went by, it led to my involvement with content management. The volume and scope of our work had expanded tremendously, but our approval process didn’t grow along with it. It had become sheer chaos. It was in dire need of order and coherence, and I decided that this was an opportunity for me to make a bigger difference.

Henrik: [1:46] Why does a television channel, focused on comedy programming, use Digital Asset Management?

Kevin: [1:53] We use asset management to support our promotional efforts here. Just to be clear, I want you to know that this is not a function of our long‑form programming. We are part of Brand Creative, and our primary partner is the Marketing team. Everything that we do is focused on promotion and marketing, and the graphics that go into that production.

[2:17] I want to talk about the two prongs of asset management here at Comedy Central. The first one is DAM. These would be our libraries of static assets used across our advertising and promotional campaigns. The second is content management. We developed a system here to manage our internal work‑in‑progress. This could be the review and the approval of all of our creative output.

Henrik: [2:42] What are the biggest challenges and successes that you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Kevin: [2:45] For the first prong, Digital Asset Management, we started building our asset libraries about 10 year ago, as I said. All of our logos, our images, artwork, and including a PDF archive of all of our print work. That’s been updated over time ‑‑ not only the assets, but the back‑end ‑‑ but it still performs its original mission, for the most part.

[3:07] As far as challenges are concerned, I would say the first challenge was getting it off the ground. We obviously needed corporate resources so we could invest in the system, and then operate it on an ongoing basis.

[3:19] After that, it took a lot of work to prepare the assets. That’s the first step for any system that’s going from nothing to something. You’ve got to organize, you need to upload, and you need to keyword all the assets.

[3:32] After that, we had the ongoing challenge of keeping it up to date. The main issue for us, as I imagine it is for a lot of people, is that we don’t have a dedicated staff, so we do it in our down‑time. Even though we ourselves are dedicated to it, there’s often a lag between when an asset gets created and when it goes up to the library.

[3:51] For instance, if we do an entire ad campaign, the last thing we do before we archive it ‑‑ all the resource files, we make PDFs and put them in our asset library. So there’s a lag, depending on the scope of the campaign and how long it’s taking.

[4:08] After that, I would say probably the biggest challenge is just getting everybody on‑board. This took training, this took patience. People have been used to coming to my team directly, and just asking us for anything. Once we got this up and running, we would remind them to check the asset library first.

[4:27] Sometimes the thing they wanted wasn’t there, or it hadn’t been keyworded, or it just didn’t exist. Part of the training process was that we would fix the problem, upload the asset, and then make them go back and look again.

[4:40] This really went a long way to building good habits. Nowadays, people will come to me and say, “I already searched the library, but I couldn’t find what I was looking for.” And that’s really music to my ears.

[4:53] As far as successes are concerned, there’s a funny little story. A little while back, I was talking to my assistant, and I asked him, “Does anybody even use this system that we’ve put all our work into? I mean, why do we even bother?”

[5:05] He answered my question with a question. He asked me, “When is the last time that anyone came and asked you for a logo? The system is just working.”

“That’s when I knew [DAM] had become an essential resource for Comedy Central.”

[5:13] Almost prophetically, the system went down a few days later. Within about 30 minutes, I’d heard from about a half‑dozen people. That’s when I knew it had become an essential resource for Comedy Central.

[5:27] The second prong of asset management that I wanted to talk about is content management. I really enjoy talking about this, because it really is such an interesting project, and it’s made a profound difference in how we work.

[5:39] I think it really shows a path forward for our field as we imagine our future, and try to be more creative about how to make it dance.

[5:46] Our content management system is kind of like asset management on steroids. It’s active, it’s alive, and this has become a centerpiece where anyone can instantly see everything that we are doing, in real time, by visiting the site.

[6:00] Our content management system is a tool that we use, basically, to manage our work‑in‑progress. It has a longer name that nobody uses ‑‑ we call it the Creative Review and Approval System. It is, from the standpoint of most of our users, a Web based application.

[6:18] It lives in the cloud, and it’s used to coordinate the efforts of all of our design teams. The graphic designers, the Web designers, the animators ‑‑ they upload their work for review and approval. Then they can also get comments and updates from their team members.

[6:37] A great example of our workflow prior to this would be how we made Web banner ads. This is going back maybe four years. The team for building Web banner ads would be ‑‑ a developer on one end, the marketing department on the other, and in between you would have project managers, designers, and one or two or more creative directors.

[6:57] The number of individually posted files of updates and the number of emails about them, just to get one ad approved, was insane. All the comments were buried in enormous email‑chains. There was no way to really visually track an ad’s progress, and when the first ad was finally approved after 20 rounds, we had two dozen more to go. There was almost no way to really compare the ads to ensure consistency.

[7:26] What we built was a content management system to fix the process. Over time, we expanded and re‑built it so it would service not only the Web banner ads, but it would also serve the entire Brand Creative department, and it would be able to handle video clips, Web banner ads, and basically any kind of static asset.

[7:50] Now, all from one place, our users can do a number of common tasks. They can upload files, update it with new versions, they can email their team members, they can view and leave comments. Their managers can review, approve, and reject things. They can create lightboxes they can share with anybody.

[8:07] Then they can take anything that’s in the system and pretty much share with anybody else with just a couple of clicks. For the last piece, you could see the entire campaigns with just a click, it’s an automagic slideshow, for anyone that wants to review the entire campaign, or for any normal user who wants to just take a look and see what other departments are doing. The magic part, though, is when a campaign is archived, it becomes a searchable library of our completed work.

[8:38] So… challenges, you asked.

[8:41] Well, once again, it wasn’t easy to get resources for our initial investment. It took a lot of persuasion that what we envisioned would be a better product than anything we could get on the market. But then we got some seed money, and we were able to show proof of concept, and then grow it from there.

[8:59] A surprising challenge was simply getting the teams to work together and be open to sharing their ideas with each other. They really all liked living in their happy little silos. I got feedback from a couple of people that really were worried that their projects, which were so important to them, would just be sort of lost in all the other projects of other people that were working on the same campaign. From my perspective, that’s kind of the point. No man is an island, anymore. You are playing in a bigger sandbox.

Henrik: [9:31] True.

Kevin: [9:31] The other part of the challenge, for me, was just patience. It took more than a weekend to build this and I would say that it was the fruit of many months of development and testing, and we’re still getting comments and feedback. I got some comments just this week that we intend to work on to improve the functionality of our lightboxes. It’s a work‑in‑progress.

[9:55] Now, as far as successes are concerned, I would say that it’s pretty obvious. Everybody is just collaborating like we never have before. We’re talking to each other, we know who is working on the other projects, and we have quick ways of communicating with them, to get a visual overview of what we and other people are working on. So it really has, just by its design and by its very nature, helped collaboration.

[10:20] User engagement with the system is just phenomenal. My co‑workers and colleagues care enough to give feedback all the time, and it’s not all positive. Sometimes they come in and they just demand better features, or they have a great idea to make an improvement. Their engagement is just wonderful, and I appreciate it so much. Any kind of feedback is a sign that they care, rather than just accepting the status quo. That’s why we started this whole thing to begin with.

[10:52] Another success ‑‑ and this one totally surprised me ‑‑ our most popular feature turned out to be lightboxes. These have just revolutionized the way that we give presentations. There’s no more poking around in the middle of a meeting to find assets on a server somewhere. It just puts everything in a streamlined slideshow that you can navigate with the arrow key on your keyboard.

[11:16] This was a feature, I know and am glad to say, that nobody asked for, and nobody even imagined something like this could be possible. And yet, there it is, and they love it.

[11:29] The last thing, and this always gives me a chuckle. We kept the old system on standby. Just in case, you know? It slowly and gradually fell into disuse, and finally, when the old thing crashed, nobody even noticed for several days.

Henrik: [11:46] [laughs]

Kevin: [11:47] What does that tell you?

Henrik: [11:48] Time to make it extinct.

Kevin: [11:50] Yeah.

Henrik: [11:52] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Kevin: [11:57] I am kind of a contrarian by nature, but I really think that formal education, maybe formal training, is not necessary to enter this field. It’s wide open for anybody who wants to make a difference. I really bet that if you took a survey of influential people in the field, very few have actually gone to school for it. What you need is a desire to make a difference ‑‑ a passion for it. It also helps if you get a lucky break and you have the right contacts.

[12:26] Lastly, I think anyone wanting to become a DAM professional needs determination and patience for the long journey.

Henrik: [12:34] Great points. Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin: [12:36] It’s a pleasure.

Henrik: [12:38] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com.

Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Beth Goldstein.

[0:10] Beth, how are you?

Beth Goldstein: [0:11] I’m good. Thank you. How are you?

Henrik: [0:12] Great.

[0:13] Beth, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Beth: [0:16] I’m the International Digital Asset Manager for my company. I train and evangelize our DAM to all our business partners across the globe.

Henrik: [0:24] How does an American healthcare company use Digital Asset Management?

Beth: [0:29] Even though we’re based here in the US, we really are extremely global. We as a company use our DAM internally to save time, money, and better leverage our investments in all of our creative content.

[0:41] We call our DAM, the e‑Library. The e‑Library is only one component of our greater and smarter digital initiative that we’ve been rolling out, to our marketing teams across the globe for the past three years.

Henrik: [0:54] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Beth: [0:57] Honestly, the biggest challenge is moving the business partners and marketers from the old way of doing business. Some of them believe in shared drive, SharePoint sites, USB drives, FTP sites, and many times all of these at once. Then seeing the value of going to a cloud‑based stand, where everything works harmoniously together.

[1:17] I believe that change management is a huge part of my job in engaging businesses, partners understanding I will just save them time and money. I think that change management is always going to be a problem whenever you’re dealing with lots and lots of people.

[1:31] But if you can show them in big steps, if you get one group together that has a big part of your digital asset like a global team, and get them lessons first and show that they’re uploading files, it tends to get the smaller teams excited as well. I believe our biggest success to date has been the adoption, since our launch last September, 2014.

[1:52] Currently we have over 41 countries trained and using, over 800 users, and over 10,000 digital assets in our e‑Library right now. Our biggest push was going to the global teams that create massive amounts of material like I was talking about, and showing them how easier they can create and distribute materials to country marketers.

[2:12] It was a big win for everyone in that conversation. Most of big companies have a lot of little countries like Malaysia, or Taiwan. They don’t have these big marketing budgets. But the global in US teams has much bigger budgets, so it’s easier for them to make these big pieces.

[2:26] iPad apps or big inactive PDFs, or videos, and be able to put them into our DAM. Then the countries can bring them down, localize them at a cost that is right for them, and use them.

Henrik: [2:39] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals, and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

“…be relentless, but gentle…”

Beth: [2:45] The advice I would give is to be relentless, but gentle with your business partners. I think that any new process people have to get used to the fact that they’ll be doing something different, or in a new way. Embrace that by making it fun.

[2:57] Have a naming contest for your DAM, which we did. The e‑Library was actually named by one of our employee, who wanted to make sure that it had a positive connotation and that it was brought in across the business, and that’s what we did.

[3:11] We also had a contest to see which team internally could have the most assets uploaded by a certain time. Our time frame was September to the end of the year, and we just got done with that contest. It created a lot of excitement and competition, which marketers are very competitive. It was a really great thing.

[3:27] I think that with my job here, a big portion of it is you have to believe in what you’re doing so that other people believe in it, to get them to buy in. If I don’t believe that what we have is amazing and is going to work for so many people, then no one else will.

[3:41] Believe in your DAM with your business partners as well. Also communicate. My DAM users continually hear about me, whether they like it or not. It’s not just something that we launched in September, and then just continue something that went into the background.

[3:55] I have weekly DAM Monday emails, and I kind of tongue in cheek say, “Again, it’s DAM Monday.” I give to them a tip or trick, or communicate to them that something big is coming, or training, or just asking for feedback.

[4:08] This is a really great way to be, but to continually keep it in the back of your mind that you have these tools out there, and you need to remember to go into it because it’s a new process. I also have every other month email communication newsletters that I send out, and that gives actual updates to integration, new things that are out there, new training, new team members, all that kind of stuff.

[4:30] If you want to become a DAM professional, definitely get into understanding how you can be a great business partner. I think that the job sits between a business partner and an IT. If you have a good background of both, then you’re able to be a good business partner and saying that you can communicate to the rest of the business.

[4:49] Not just the technical aspect, but what will be the benefit to the entire company. I think that you’re going to go far.

Henrik: [4:56] Thank you so much Beth.

Beth: [4:57] Of course.

Henrik: [4:58] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com.

Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Pete Chamberlain. Pete, how are you?

Pete Chamberlain: [0:09] Good. How are you, Henrik?

Henrik: [0:10] Great. Pete, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Pete: [0:14] I work for a global software company and I am the director of marketing content infrastructure. I manage the Digital Asset Management system for our marketing organization through marketing operations.

Henrik: [0:26] Pete, how does a global software company use Digital Asset Management?

Pete: [0:31] We use our Digital Asset Management system as a central repository that allows us to provide global syndication of marketing content and provides us with the ability to maintain asset versioning and branding control.

Henrik: [0:44] Pete, what are the successes and challenges with Digital Asset Management?

Pete: [0:49] From a success standpoint, been fortunate that there’s been a pretty strong vision in terms of how we’re moving forward. The strategic vision that has led us down the path to being a centralized repository, being centrally managed, being centrally governed.

[1:04] One of the things that has really been successful for us is our ability to act as an internal service organization to the marketing department, and understanding how to work with people. It’s really all about a people business. People think in different ways. They search in different ways. They learn at different paces, different skill sets.

[1:30] We spend a tremendous amount of time in terms of overcoming any challenges to adoption that you might have for the system. We have an extensive enablement program help desk support. The first line of help desk support is actually managed by the business and not IT.

[1:46] One of the things that we found early on that was a challenge for our users was that they would send a note to the technical resources saying, “I’ve got a complication. I don’t understand how to do X, Y, or Z. I can’t get at my asset.” They would get a note back that may say something like “Works as designed.” And it’s just not helpful.

[2:09] What we did was we separated that and created a help desk that comprises basically us on the business side as business administrators to be able to work directly with, one‑on‑one, our end users so that we were sure that they had any of the training they need, any of the tips that they need.

[2:28] We’re really looking at how we could help them do their job more efficiently, more effectively, so that they would enjoy the benefits of a DAM system. One of the things that we look at, at all times, when we’re dealing with our end users. We get end users who can get pretty upset. They’ve got tight deadlines to meet.

[2:47] If they can’t find something, they can’t seem to perform a function they want, those are the people that we like to work with the most.

[2:54] They present an opportunity for success for the system and success for us as a team, because typically you can turn that person to not only an ambassador for your system, amongst their peers, but more importantly, those are the people that are passionate about the function of digital asset management.

[3:10] Those are the people that can find us with a road map of how to support the organization better. It’s their daily functions of their jobs that we’re trying to make more efficient. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.

[3:23] I really get back to the point that I think it’s, the technology that’s nice and slick. It still is really about people.

[3:30] We’ve had a significant amount of success with the adoption. We anticipate that will continue. We have a department that’s fairly small, but we do some work with 3,000 users in our end user community.

[3:42] One of the other success we’ve experienced with are Digital Asset Management system is we have a member of our team who has over 20 years of experience and expertise in master data management.

[3:54] Where this has come in useful is in managing metadata and data quality around metadata. We have the ability to monitor the quality of the metadata instantly. It’s a self-service for our administrators. They can look at the different parameters around the metadata, understand where there are gaps, make assessments, be proactive in managing it and really they’ve taken a process that’s typically very manual.

[4:25] We’ve been able to somewhat automate that and create a baseline of quality around the metadata. This is really important when you start thinking about if you start to connect your applications to your DAM and you’re serving content across multi‑channels making sure that it’s accurate so, that it serve in a proper way.

[4:44] Whether it’s across the organization or externally is key to the success of some of the upcoming programs that we have like market automation.

Henrik: [4:53] What information would you like to share with DAM, the professionals and the people inspiring to be DAM professionals?

Pete: [4:58] The key point that I’d like to share is that if you’re aspiring to be a DAM professional, whether you’re our DAM professional not to lose track of the fact that it really is a people business.

[5:10] Understand that it’s about relationships. It’s about working with people. It’s about enabling them for success. When all of those things go into place and you’re able to provide them with a solid operational foundation that efficient, and effective for them, look at the fact that in marketing operations specifically what we do great operations becomes great marketing.

[5:36] If we focus on the fact that it really is all about people, we’d be very successful in what we gonna do. Technology is almost secondary at that point.

How does an organization focused automobile advertising use Digital Asset Management?

What are the biggest challenges and successes you have seen with DAM?

What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Full Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Michelle Lowe.
[0:09] Michelle, how are you?Michelle Lowe: [0:10] Hi, Henrik, good. How are you?Henrik: [0:11] Good. Michelle, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?Michelle: [0:15] I am the Digital Asset Manager in an automotive agency, and I
was introduced to the Digital Asset Management more than a decade ago when
we started producing digital assets and that created a need of storage for all
the photography, illustration, videos. Now, in the recent years, we started the
apps, too, the applications. At the beginning, we created a rudimentary digital
storage. We didn’t have anything. We called it a jukebox. That was based on the
[0:37] hard drives, DVDs and servers, which didn’t work very well with us.
But later on, we were able to acquire a Digital Asset Management system, and
our lives completely changed, became a lot easier.
[1:01] A couple of years ago, I moved to another agency that didn’t have any
type of storage system. They were in big need of a DAM. With my previous experience,
I was able to put in place a Digital Asset Management system, making
sure all the assets are easy to be accessed, the metadata is correct, the rights
and expiration dates are up to date. For legal matters, this is very important in
the advertising world.
[1:30] I am responsible for adjusting and processing all the agency’s assets and,
also, for delivering them to our clients’ central DAM system. They have one, too,
because they have many agencies they work with. They use all the assets such
as digital assets, from every other agency.
[1:51] Our agency’s digital asset system is a central repository where every art
director, or designer, or buyer, competitor even, account executives can access
the assets and use them for their project.
[2:05] DAM is a very flexible storage system, we have all kinds of files, APS, has
JPEG s in designs. We have them in all kinds, audio and video files, too. That
helps a lot.Henrik: [2:21] How does an organization focused on automobile advertising use
Digital Asset Management?Michelle: [2:26] Because our client operates globally, we must be efficient.
When it comes to digital assets, advertising now is a very fast paced environment
and projects have a quick turn around and having DAM systems helps immensely.
[2:41] We’re introducing a very large number of assets with our projects
but at the same time, for budget purposes, we have to share the assets with
other agencies that work for the same clients. To meet these needs, we deliver
to our client everything we create along with the metadata and they add them
to their central DAM system where the other agencies, around the world, have
access to.Henrik: [3:07] What are the biggest challenges and success that you’ve seen
with Digital Asset Management?Michelle: [3:11] Usually, adoption would be one challenge, and getting people
to know about Digital Asset Management system and accepting it and finally
using it. But since I have the system, I had to train and many times, I go one-onone
team members and it’s challenging. [3:30] Another challenge is the metadata
which is a very important part of any DAM system and everyone needs to
be involved in it, in the input of it. Not only for the legal aspect of it but also
because the quality of the metadata we applied to the assets can affect the
chances of them being found and subsequently used. Every word becomes
of keyword.
[3:55] Eventually, if you research that, DAM has a great future. I would like to be
better at it that and advertising. It’s a challenge, at this point, too. That’s the
best thing when we have our colleagues and team members learning something
about it and working with it and finding that it’s making their lives a lot easier
that is the best thing.Henrik: [4:23] What advice would you like to share with other DAM professionals
and people aspiring to be DAM professionals?Michelle: [4:27] A Digital Asset Manager needs to have great organizational
skills, be focused, and try to stay consistent. I think a bit OCD, if I can say that
would actually work because a perfectionist is an ideal candidate for the DAM.
[4:46] Another advice would be understand the user’s rights and copyright law
and really understand the work flow process of your organization that you are
involved with that is very, very important.
[5:00] I’ve been doing this for a while and I think working on DAM is just perfect
because it gives you challenges and gives you joy. Every day, I can tell you,
it’s the best.Henrik: [5:13] Thank you, Michelle.Michelle: [5:14] You’re welcome. It was a great pleasure.Henrik: [5:17] For more on Digital Asset Management topics, log on toAnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboo andiTunes. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me atAnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

I understand your organization focuses on end-to-end signal transmission solutions, what does that mean to customers?

How does an organization focused on end-to-end signal transmission solutions use Digital Asset Management?

What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Full Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Lincoln Howell.
Lincoln, how are you?Lincoln Howell: [0:09] I am doing well, thanks.Henrik: [0:11] Lincoln, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?Lincoln: [0:14] I have helped lead the implementation of our current Digital
Asset Management solution, and essentially have two ongoing responsibilities
with it. The first is driving improvements to both the content and the delivery of
those assets. But second of all, I am one of our global administrators. So I provide
some of that administrative oversight to rights management and any ongoing
proposed structural improvements.Henrik: [0:36] Lincoln, I understand your organization focuses on end-to-end
signal transmission solutions. What does that mean to customers?Lincoln: [0:42] We live in a world that is filled with signals. You have audio signals,
video signals, data signals, every time we get onto the Internet. These signals
all require an infrastructure of copper, fiber and other networking solutions
to help get them from that point of origin to each of us as a consumer. [1:05]
Now, I work with Belden Incorporated, and Belden provides that infrastructure
that enables those signals to go from that starting point to the ending point.
[1:14] For example, each time you watch a sports event on TV that originates
down on a field somewhere with somebody working the camera. In between
that camera and your television is a whole network of fiber solutions, copper
solutions, networking switches and routers. All of that processes that signal, the
audio and visual signal from the field to your living room. That’s the infrastructure
that’s enabled by these Belden solutions.
[1:46] Additionally, data centers, every time that you’re working with Internet
solutions or cloud based applications, data centers run solutions, also, that
can be provided by Belden on the copper, fiber and other solutions within the
data center.
[2:02] Manufacturing, also, has a significant play within the signal transmission.
Automotive manufacturers, for example, will use robotics, machinery and all
sorts of equipment that requires an interconnectedness that relies on copper,
fiber solutions to keep them running, communicating with each other and
achieving the outputs of that factory.
[2:26] In the end, the Belden copper, fiber and networking solutions make it possible
for all of these signals to get from where they start to where they need to
be and keep the world running.Henrik: [2:37] How does an organization focused on end-to-end signal transmission
solutions use Digital Asset Management?Lincoln: [2:45] Building an end-to-end solution with signal transmission has
taken years of growth through a combination of both research and development
as well as some strategic acquisitions. This ongoing journey has resulted in a
very complex organization. [3:00] That complexity is showing up in sells graphs
of varying responsibilities and skillsets, engineering and product management
teams that are scattered across the globe, and marketing staff, too, that are
tasked with consolidating all of the individual components of the signal transmission
solution to a single coherent message for the customers.
[3:18] In the end, without Digital Asset Management, we find ourselves constantly
reinventing the wheel or missing opportunities to win customers by
leveraging materials that we’ve already invested. Our first phase with Digital
Asset Management has been to make significant improvement in our customer
engagement.
[3:34] We’ve been consolidating our assets that can be used in the interaction
with the customer, and we’ve been striving to make them easily accessible
across the globe, opening up channels for sharing these assets across all of the
geographies and across all of these functional themes.
[3:49] Our second phase with the Digital Asset Management is going to be
turning towards more of an internal implementation, where we use it to facilitate
the distribution of corporate standards, other policies and other HR
communications.Henrik: [4:02] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?Lincoln: [4:06] I think it’s all about the taxonomy. What we’ve found here is that
you can consolidate digital assets on any server. That’s not the hard part. It’s
the retrieval and the consumption of those assets that’s the real goal. You need
those to be consumed by the right people at the right time. [4:25] What was
learned is that setting up and sustaining, sustaining being the key of successful
taxonomy, makes all the difference in the world. That taxonomy is just comprised
of intuitive categories, tagging, and the metadata that really makes your
asset library searchable by its users. Without that taxonomy, it becomes more of
a frustration than a solution.
[4:48] In order to set that up, we found that it’s not just having that technical
competence, being able to understand the system. But it really requires a
keen organizational eye and a lot of people skills. Because as you have various
people participating in and contributing to your digital asset library, you’ve got
to have a lot of one-on-one interactions with them, to insure that standard work
is followed and to insure that that organizational structure, that taxonomy, stays
intact. Because, once again, without that taxonomy, all you’ve got it a pile of
assets on a server somewhere.
[5:21] What you really need is a clean library that people can easily find what
they’re looking for at their fingertips.Henrik: [5:28] Thanks, Lincoln.Lincoln: [5:29] You bet.Henrik: [5:30] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log
on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboo,iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any comments or questions,
please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

How does an organization focused on athletic clothing use Digital Asset Management?

What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Full Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Kezia Everson. So
how are you?Kezia Everson: [laughs] [0:10] I’m good, thank you.Henrik: [0:11] Kezia, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?Kezia: [0:14] I work in the global marketing team at SKINS in the headquarters
in Switzerland. SKI NS designs and manufactures technical compression sportswear.
It’s scientifically proven to help athletes achieve their goals. We currently
have several offices globally. We’ve got subsidiary offices in Australia, the USA,
UK, France, Germany, and China. [0:38] We also have global distributors, so in
Japan, India, South Korea, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and
throughout Europe. A couple of years ago, we realized that we needed to find
a solution that would allow all of our regions to get access to all of the data files
that they needed, instantly and regardless of time zones. We needed to find a
web based Digital Asset Management system that could house multiple types
of file that was available 24 hours a day.
[1:13] After researching several options, we chose Picture Park to be our structured
administration and management system, for our media assets. Essentially,
my role at SKINS now is managing our Digital Asset Management system.
Ensuring that people across the globe have access to it and all of the key files
are updated to the system and correctly tagged within the portal.Henrik: [1:42] How does an organization focused on athletic clothing used
Digital Asset Management?Kezia: [1:46] We currently sell around about 160 different compression products,
including specific ranges for different sports, like cycling, triathlon, golf
and snow sports. As well as our general, multipurpose active and recovery
ranges. Because we have such a wide range of products, we also have a lot
of logos and guidelines for each range. And also, there’s associated athlete
photography with various athletes wearing our products. [2:18] Also, product
renders of the products themselves, 3D render files for use online and things.
We’ve also got things like size chart files, packaging artwork files, lots of POS ,
Point of Sale, templates, website graphics, press releases, etc. All of this information
needs to be stored in one place. Also, due to the nature of the data
we have a lot of different file formats, TIFFs, JPEGs, InDesign files, Adobe
Photoshop files, audio files, movie files, as well as standard Microsoft Word
and Office files. Our Digital Asset Management system needed to be flexible
enough to house all of the different file types we have.
[3:06] It’s used predominantly as a sales and marketing platform. So those teams
around the globe can access the files they need when they want them. But it’s
also used by our legal general counsel. He has access to a portion of the system
that houses our legal documents securely. So we use it in a variety of different
ways, throughout the business. For us, our Digital Asset Management system is
not a general upload/download tool.
[3:34] We use YouSendIt for general file transfers and work in progress documents.
That means that our DAM system is a quality controlled environment.
But we also want SKINS to be a sharing community. So being able to upload
artwork files and templates ensures brand consistency across the globe and also
enables better sharing between the regions. This helps use save duplication of
work, because if one region has created an artwork file for a brochure or a flier,
they can upload that artwork to our DAM system.
[4:13] Another region who might want to create something very similar can see it
and download it and adapt it to their region as needed. It’s, for us, a platform to
promote and share the best content and the best ideas. As such, we’ve created
different access levels for different members, within the organization. As well as
some external partners, like design agencies, advertising agencies, etc. Within
our subs, the marketing teams also have upload access accounts.
[4:44] So they can share files through DAMs. And we have a media standard
guideline document that we share with all of our agencies, to ensure that whatever
files or final pieces of work they produce, the formats they produce them in
are compatible with our DAM system. Again, part of my role is to provide training
to new members of staff when they join the company, about the benefits of
our systems and also to new distributors.
[5:14] Telling them how to search for files and how to download them and email
them quickly to other people who might need access to them external to our
organization. And also, I train them on uploading files and tagging them, so
they can be easily accessed and found by other people.Henrik: [5:32] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people assuring to become DAM professionals?Kezia: [5:37] I don’t really have any advice. I would just say that our picture park
system has really revolutionized the way we operate here at SKINS. Previously,
marketing and sales materials were housed on our servers. So that not only took
up precious space, but it was also not apparent exactly where certain files were
saved. Not all of our suboffices and distributors had access to our in-house servers.
[6:04] So we were inundated with requests for materials. Sending out files
to people is almost a full time job. Having the picture park system, over the last
year and a half, has really revolutionized our lives here. And the daily management
of our assets has really been improved. I would definitely recommend to
people who don’t have a system like this in place that it really does make a huge
difference, in many different ways.Henrik: [6:36] Thanks, Kezia. For more on this and other Digital Asset
Management topics, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast
is available on AudioBoo, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If
you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me atAnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.